Environmental Advocacy Groups Clash Over Wind and Solar Installations in Italy

"Unacceptable the attack by Legambiente Campania on the Superintendent of Caserta," thus, in a statement, Massimo Maresca, president of Italia Nostra Campania, Davide Iannelli, president of Italia Nostra Matese Alto Tammaro, Giuseppe Longobardi, coordinator of Lipu Campania, and Marcello Stefanucci, provincial delegate of Lipu Benevento, for whom "the intervention last week by the president Imparato of Legambiente Campania, regarding the proposal to declare areas in the Municipalities of Morcone and Santa Croce del Sannio of considerable public interest, leaves us astonished for its severity. It mocks the evaluations of the Ministry, accusing it of 'an unequivocal strategy of the Ministry of Culture Mic' against the installation of wind and solar energy production plants, dictated by political and 'ideological' reasons and not institutional ones. Now, the Mic, under the prerogatives established by the Code of Cultural Heritage and Landscape, evaluates areas of significant relevance as natural and agricultural landscape, for the settlement system, and for archaeological emergencies, and defines the safeguarding norms, which exclude the possibility of industrial plants. In this case, it is an area adjacent to the Matese National Park under construction, characterized by the passage of the Regio Tratturo Pescasseroli-Candela, continuing from the nearby (six and a half kilometers) Roman city of the tratturi Saepinum-Altilia, recently became a National Archaeological Park, towards the city of the Liguri Bebiani in Circello and then towards the Fortore and Puglia." Italia Nostra Campania and Lipu Campania also recall that "transhumance is considered by UNESCO as intangible heritage and that in adjacent Molise, there is a plan to invest 130 million euros on the tratturi, with a national project for protection and enhancement. Is it surprising that the Mic, based on the Archaeological Map of the Benevento section of the Regio Tratturo and the municipality of Morcone, drafted in 2010 by highly authoritative scholars, found in the area cultural and landscape values such as to necessitate safeguarding instruments? Moreover, the area, as well as from two projects for a total of 12 wind turbines of over 200 meters on both sides of the Regio Tratturo, currently not authorized and under evaluation for the evident impacts, is also threatened by a proliferation of intensive farming and by building interventions worsening the value of the existing villages and the landscape." In their opinion, "the president of Legambiente Campania even resurrects the invention of wind turbine tourism that would be prevented here, advocating the need to make 'alternative' energy plants without limits of time and place, while the Country is finally engaged by the same European directives to identify the 'suitable areas' for the Renewable Energy Sources." Italia Nostra and Lipu, finally, hope that the position of the Legambiente manager will be refuted: "It is unacceptable, and we would like to remind her that territories are not abstract concepts to be studied and modified on paper, but concrete places, in which man and nature, for millennia, have built landscape, culture, and beauty."